Hu Jintao

President of People's Republic of China, China

(born Dec. 25, 1942, Taizhou, Jiangsu province, China) General secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; from 2002) and president of China (from 2003). After studying engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Hu laboured as a construction worker in Gansu province, where he met Song Ping, a party elder who became Hu's mentor and later introduced him to the CCP general secretary, Hu Yaobang. By the mid-1980s Hu Jintao had risen to general secretary of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL), and in 1985 he was appointed party secretary for Guizhou province, where he helped implement educational and economic reforms. Named a member of the CCP Central Committee in 1987, he was sent to Tibet the following year as a provincial party secretary. In 1992 he was appointed a member of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, and in 1998 he was elected vice president of China. Hu succeeded President Jiang Zemin as general secretary of the CCP in 2002 and was elected president the following year. In 2004 he became head of the Central Military Commission after Jiang resigned the post.

China’s top leaders warned fellow Communist Party members this week against forming cliques, days after a probe of the top lieutenant of former President Hu Jintao offered a reminder of the divisions within the party.

The Chinese Communist Party’s decision to investigate a onetime top aide to former President Hu Jintao has resurfaced old scandals and lifted the cloak that shielded the former leader’s closest allies from scrutiny.

The past three turnovers in the inner circle of China’s Communist Party leadership have come with an age guideline for retirement: Those 67 years old or younger could stay; those 68 or older had to go. Now, comments from a senior party functionary are adding fuel to speculation that President Xi Jinping may break with the norm at a once-every-five-years...

China said it has placed a top spy under investigation for alleged disciplinary violations, signaling the country’s campaign against graft has reached into the highest levels of the intelligence services.

Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged from a top-level Communist Party conclave with a new leadership title, signaling an expansion of his political authority—and his ability to smother simmering dissent.